Friday, January 27, 2017

In terms of expanding our Rossini horizons, this last year or so
in opera has been a boon. Bare Opera brought us one of his earliest youthful
works, La cambiale di matrimonio. The Met simultaneously presented his
first big breakout success, L’italiana in Algeri, and his final
masterwork, Guillaume Tell. Bel Canto at Caramoor bestowed Aureliano in Palmiraupon us over the summer. La gazza ladra landed alongside
the lake at Glimmerglass; and a most memorable Turco in Italia at
Juilliard not too awfully long ago. Opera Philadelphia has Tancredi in
store for us next month. After lavishing its racy take on LeComte Oryon us last June, LoftOpera is about to tackle Otello, another
masterful rarity.

So much of Rossini’s backcatalog has been ransacked of late that
the uber-canonical joys of Il barbiere di Siviglia begins to feel less
like the monolithic central altarpiece in the temple of bel canto worship and
more like a quaint relic, easily overlooked, far from the main stage
languishing as a sideshow somewhere. However, when the likes of Peter Mattei
is slated to sing it… now that’s an opportunity that’s hard to pass up. What
else are we going to hear the golden-tones of the great Peter Mattei in this
year at the Met if not this?

Mattei's absence unsettles us in our seatsPhoto credit: Marty Sohl

Promptly taking our seats well in advance of the curtain, we were
flummoxed to find that Peter Mattei had taken ill. What a bummer that little
slip of paper in the program was! Our spirits sunk so low that we almost
gathered our things and hit the road. But yet, something kept us there. We made
a pact to sit through the first act and give the benchwarmers a chance. We
vowed to decide whether to stay for the rest or not at intermission. So we
settled back in. And, boy, are we glad we did.

The biggest disappointment of the evening turned into one of the
greatest surprises. The sun began to shine again through our clouds of doom and
gloom from the moment Edward Parks, Mattei’s substitute, was wheeled out
on the roof of Figaro’s mobile bottega by his bevy of damigelle.
To say Parks came out strong in his opening number, Largo al factotum,
is an understatement. His round manly sound, reminiscent not of Mattei but of a
more virile Erwin Schrott, instantly redeemed the evening.

Edward Parks covers for Mattei

Parks has a handsome
instrument and great stage presence. He is naturally playful and hunky. In fact
he would make a perfect Don Giovanni. He’s more brutal in his attack on the
notes than Mattei. He’s not as lyrical as the man we came to see and doesn’t
savor the words in Mattei’s inimitable way, but it is, nevertheless, great to
see a benchwarmer rise to the occasion and shine like this, considering the
shoes he had to fill. Parks isn’t your average panchinaro. He is
obviously a formidable talent in his own right. That’s why it’s always worth
giving the back up a day in court. You never know what’s in store.

Soprano Pretty Yende is lighter and flightier than your
typical Rosina. She has a way of eating up her musical line with killer agility
and piercingly beautiful high notes. She expanded famous numbers like Io
sono docile in her own unique virtuosic way, imbuing her tempos with more
space and lengthening the time between her notes. It’s a treat to get a singer
who really relishes the opportunities afforded by Rossini’s bel canto compositional style. Making
the part her own, slowing certain passages down, taking extra rubato high notes, dishing out moments
of pure vocal genius. She is one of the great singers at the Met at the moment.
And tonight she was on fire.

Pretty Yende owned the orchestra as RosinaPhoto credit: Marty Sohl

Dottor Bartolo was replaced with panache by Maurizio Muraro.
His booming bass-baritone resounded through the Met with forceful self-assurance.
But he is old hat in this role at the Met, so we were less worried about his
ability to so fully channel, body and soul, the spirit of the dirty old tutor.
As ever, Muraro was a pleasure to watch in this role.

Often sung by an older mezzo, Karolina Pilou played a
youthful Berta and really showed off her acting chops. She was always in
character. I kept my eye on her through my binoculars every time she was on
stage. She filled the space with her big voice, which is naturally graced with
fluidity and agility. She also made her vocal presence forcefully felt in the
ensembles, in which she really delivered.

Muraro is Bartolo, body and soulPhoto credit: Marty Sohl

The tenor, however, was the weak link. Dmitry Korchak came
out a bit cold and only finally warmed up in the second half of the first act.
He just wasn’t bright or sparkly or bubbly enough for this kind of repertoire,
particularly if you’re sad to have missed a Camarena night of the run. He’s not
unpleasant but he’s not exciting enough, which is what this kind of Rossini
demands of its singers, at the intersection of bel canto and opera buffa.

Though we had both seen this production numerous times in the
past, it was a pleasure to revisit it. It is full of clever touches from the
ballet of doors to the giant anvil that drops in the Act I finale as the sextet
drones on about an incudine sonora. Bartlett Sher’s direction is
clear, imaginative, faithful to the mood of the piece and fluid.

When done right like this with great singers Rossini’s Barbiere
is a sparkling opera. The kind of night out that leaves you feeling refreshed
with your spirits lifted. And the score achieved its maximal frizzante flair under the baton of Maurizio
Benini. The Met orchestra sounded tight, popping out Rossini’s staccato rhythms,
classical guitar, harpsichord and all, and yet remained flexible enough to
allow a stellar diva like Pretty Yende to spread her wings and take her own
sweet time, from time to time. Despite the sorry absence of our much beloved
Mattei, what’s not to love!

– Lui & Lei

The wool goes over the eyes of the unsuspecting victimPhoto credit: Marty Sohl

Thursday, January 26, 2017

From the very beginning, with its in medias res amorphous
opening, the uncanny score of Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin throws
you into a dream-like universe. Lush and atmospheric, the Finnish composer’s
music suspends the listener over an indistinct watery expanse. Eschewing an
overture or prelude of any kind, the first bars conjure a brine-laden formless
and foggy seascape that only slowly comes into focus the way distance lies out
over the ocean.

Susanna Mälkki conducted an
exceedingly smooth reading of this uncanny score with the utmost polish.
Interestingly, in recordings with other conductors the same score seems more
flush with jolting surprises from jarring horns and more pronounced cacophony
from the percussion. The mood created by Ms. Mälkkiwas more suggestive,
more oneiric. It came off to my ear more of a dreamy Debussy dream (à la Pelleas
et Melisande), with some of the quirkier Messiaen eccentricities that
punctuate its aural landscape toned down and mellowed out.

Bands of light imitate the sea.Photo credit: Ken Howard

Director Robert Lepage’s luminous production provided a
fitting counterpoint to the mellifluous score. Lepage and his team focused on
the ineluctable and seemingly insuperable obstacles that separate us from one
another in any relationship; the daunting gulf that so often divides two people
and impedes connection. The staging at the Met was dominated by some two-dozen
bands of light that represented the central figure of the sea in the story over
which he suspended a mobile crane that could become a stairway with a platform
on either end. The effect of the bands of light was hypnotic, particularly when
they were made to fluctuate, rise and fall, imitating at one point the
movements of a gentle yet unsettling storm at sea. But like many of this
visionary director’s productions this one was kind of a one trick pony, which
in this case was not entirely off base. It matched the spectral, minimalist
nature of the music, and it heightened the dreaminess of certain moments in the
story, especially when Rudel dreams and the idealized object of his affections
(played by a dancer) materializes over the bands of light, diving through the
waves in a dolphin-like fashion.

Also effective was the way the chorus was deployed. Strategically
placed beneath the “water” toward the back of the stage, where they could only
just barely be seen allowed them to lend their voices to the majestic and
almost mystical heightening of the singers’ voices throughout the opera. It
created a haunting and often imperceptible embellishment of the sound of the
individual singers and an almost spiritual elevation of the emotions. Less
compelling was the peek-a-boo choreographies they were made to do, poking their
heads up over the “surface” of the water in certain nightmarish moments.

The chorus makes its presence known.Photo credit: Sarah Krulwich

Based on a very brief romanticized account of the life of the
Provençal troubadour Jaufré Rudel, the plot of L’Amour de Loin can be
summarized as follows: a prince is bored with his womanizing life and decides
to devote his energies to love more deeply; a pilgrim passing by tells him
about this incredibly beautiful woman who lives across the sea in enemy
territory; prince gets very excited about the idea and starts singing lovely
poetry about the woman as the perfect idea of love; pilgrim tells the woman
about all the fuss she’s created overseas and she’s not sure how to take it;
prince decides to make the trip across the sea to finally meet the object of
his desire but when he gets there he dies from the hardships of sea travel;
woman finally sees the love and gets all combative about the whole ordeal.

A lyric lady of love breaks through to the other side.Photo credit: Met Opera

This is an opera composed by a woman about a man looking at a
woman who in turn finally gets her voice in the act of looking back at that
man. Despite the seemingly traditional underpinnings of the romantic story
itself, the triangulation of these various gazes, nevertheless, packs a radical
punch.

Scores of lyric ladies have appeared over the millennia in the
amorous and elegiac poetic tradition from Catullus, Propertius and Ovid to the
troubadours, Dante and the centuries of Petrarchists who continue to write
right down to our own time. In the history of this patriarchal literary trope,
rarely are the female objects of these poets’ affections ever afforded the
agency of speaking for themselves, seldom are they granted a voice of their
own.

If you read the libretto divorced of the score and its staging,
you come away with the impression that Clémence is quick to respond to her
suitor’s advances in kind. But the way the end of both Act II and Act III were
staged by LePage show that something slightly deeper may going on here.

Clémence steps down from her pedestal.Photo credit: Ken Howard

The most powerful of these moments occurs at the end of Act III.
Throwing a mini-conniption fit, Clémence steps down off the pedestal, on which
even the director has placed her, thus breaking the illusion of the show, and
stands between two of the bands of light, in the middle of the “water,” as
though the make-believe were over and it was no longer “water.” She is indeed
brazenly standing up and making herself heard as a living woman and not an
idealization. She defiantly no longer wants to play the game of representation
and fantasy anymore. If she has a say in the matter, she isn’t going to allow
herself to be loved in an idealistic way by someone who has never even met her.
In this take, Clémence transcends her status as passive object of desire. For a
fleeting moment in the story, she’s not going to humor a distant love like
this. She is a human being just like he is and thus wants a love that is human.

In the role of the lover from afar, Jaufré Rudel, was
bass-baritone, Eric Owens, from whose booming imperious voice I expected
more. He left me feeling a little lukewarm. Other singers that I have heard in
this role have imbued the character with a slightly more irascible, angrier
reaching quality that makes the desire of the poor bereft troubadour soar a
little more. Owens sounded more resigned in the chesty depths of his longing,
coming across as a lover who is more languidly lethargic than energetic in his
desire.

The messenger scene.Photo credit: Ken Howard

Beset not only by the obstacle of the sea, the two lovers in this
opera, which is set in the eleventh century against the backdrop of a holy war,
are positioned on opposite sides of enemy lines. The figure of the Pilgrim,
here sung by mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford, is deployed as a conduit for
the lyricism of the troubadour to pass from one character to the next. The
flights of poetic inspiration with which the opera opens belong to Jaufré. He
sends his lyrical spirit along via the Pilgrim who has been charged with the
task of embodying those inspired verses for his beloved which then in turn
inspire her to embark on flights of lyric fancy of her own.

Like Sancho Panza in an analogous messenger scene in Cervantes’ Don
Quixote, the Pilgrim rather humorously forgets most of the content of the
poetic missive from Jaufré to Clémence. He manages to transmit nothing more
than the gist of the message after garbling the end of the song he was sent to
sing on behalf of his master. It is a light-hearted moment in an otherwise
rather stolid evening at the opera. Fortunately Mumford didn’t ham it up but
rather she played the humor with subtlety and tact. She pushed the ethereal
sound of her instrument throughout. And equally used her mezzo to soar on
amorous pinions in ways that Eric Owens’ instrument simply did not, at least
the evening that we heard him. Interestingly, the Pilgrim’s arias are the only
portions of the opera that sound like they belong to the era the plot is set
in, with a style reminiscent of medieval madrigals.

Don't shoot the messengerPhoto credit: Ken Howard

Soprano Susanna Phillips, in the role of Clémence, was
simply stunning. She embodied the tricky tempos and other idiosyncrasies of the
score beautifully and she nailed all the soaring high notes that gave angelic
wings to her unattainable beauty. Phillips made the show, as both the empowered
woman with a say in things and the impressionable young pushover that this
character’s duality encompasses. Because, of course, by the end she does indeed
eventually embody the cardinal virtue suggested by her symbolic name.

The poet sets out to cross the sea.Photo credit: Sarah Krulwich

Once Jaufré musters the wherewithal to cross the sea, the journey
takes its toll on him. He arrives only to collapse at the feet of his beloved
and rather anticlimactically dies in her arms. There is nothing particularly
moving about this sudden and almost mechanical turn of events. Instead, the
climax is saved for Clémence’s response to what she is forced to endure. Seeing
that God has struck down a man so good and so sincere in his love, she lashes
out in frustration at the injustice underlying God’s moral universe.

The lovers briefly meet across the chasm.Photo credit: Ken Howard

The outcome of this brief but profound long-distance romance leads
her to take up another call to arms. This time Clémence turns to another
“lover,” one who rather ambiguously is either God himself or the deified spirit
of her lost lover. To remedy one distant love she turns to another even more
impossibly distant love. Depending on how you take this spiritual turn in the
story, the end of the opera either undermines or reinforces the notion that
there is something about true love is always only ever elsewhere.

And this is where L’Amour de Loin, while it may be set in
the middle ages, is the product of a more modern and intellectual, almost
aseptic, sensibility. This is not an opera that unleashes emotions or visceral
reactions of any sort. The dramatic tension is somehow there, yet it does not
explode in any traditional way. There is a lot of exploration of ideas
about love, but the story as told by the music never gets to your heart.

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

The revival of Elijah Moshinsky’s production of Verdi’s Nabucco
brought us pleasurably back to grand, grand opera at the Met. For works like
this one, where the historical context plays such a central role in the plot,
sticking to traditional sets (especially those as spectacular as the Met’s
here) is a necessary choice. I’m all for modernizing and streamlining
productions, but for certain operas, dazzling historical pomp is just what it
takes. Once we saw a minimalist Aida with an alien-futuristic take by Fura dels Baus and it was beyond grotesque. But back to Nabucco: not only
did this production that debuted in 2001 prove itself a timeless classic with
stunning temples and gorgeous costumes but we were also lucky to assist a
remarkable star-studded cast bring the whole thing to life with none other than
the inimitable James Levine at the helm.

Abigail moves in for the kill.Photo credit: MetOpera

Mezzo Jamie Barton played Fenena, Nabucco’s daughter. I
always jump at the opportunity to her her sing especially since I was
completely blown away by her Adalgisa in Norma last year in Los Angeles.
But after hearing Barton in Nabucco it became clear to me that Bellini’s
writing for Adalgisa just suits her voice in a whole other way. Here it was
like listening to another artist, a perfectly fine singer, just not as
transfixing. The same goes for tenor Russell Thomas as Ismaele, nephew
of the King of Jerusalem. We were bowled over by him in that same L.A. Norma.
Here he was good, just not as extraordinary as when we first got to know him.
True that both Fenena and Ismaele are not as meaty when compared to other roles
in Nabucco.

Soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska as Abigaille, Nabucco’s eldest
daughter who discovers she’s of slave descent, was a force of nature to be
reckoned with. Her sound is incredibly powerful though her Italian was often a
bit muddled. From the beginning, however, she came across musically and
theatrically as a woman on a mission, a power hungry animal in pursuit, a rebel
with a cause.

Bass Sava Vemić as the high priest of Baal, an evil
character pushing Abigaille to power, was making his Met debut. We first
encountered this young singer in a Roberto Devereux where he played the
most minor role but was the best and most powerful singer on stage after
Mariella Devia. It was great to see him again. He sounded good but not quite as
forceful as we remember him that late winter day. His voice came across a bit
too young for the role, perhaps he still needs to figure out the Met’s
acoustic. On the other hand, baritone Dmitry Belosselskiy as Zaccaria,
high priest of the Hebrews, was a discovery, which is a testament to just how
solid this cast was overall.

Tenor turned baritone steals the show.Photo credit: Marty Sohl

Which brings us to the highlight of the night. The legendary Placido
Domingo was strikingly expressive as Nabucco. I’m not sure that what we
heard was necessarily a baritone, but he sounded full and raw, and played the
emotional core of the opera like an open wound. Still going strong at his age,
Domingo exceeded my expectations on every level. While some say that Placido
should just stop pretending to be a baritone, after hearing him here, I cannot
but disagree with them since, at least here, in a way, his lyrical expressivity
as a life-long tenor translated very well into the baritonal role. No other
singer on stage conveyed character as effectively as Domingo. He portrayed the
journey of the hubristic king who falls into madness only to subsequently
convert and become an enlightened ruler with a heart-wrenching humanity that
found me tears more than once over the course of the evening.

Father-daughter dynamics turned on its head.Photo credit: Marty Sohl

At the center of Nabucco is a father-daughter drama, around
which revolves a series of satellite dilemmas that help to motivate and shape
things the larger story of the captive Hebrew population and their desire for
freedom. This is one of those rare operas in which the role of the villain is
played not by an alpha male of one kind or another, but rather by a jealous,
vindictive, power hungry woman. Who said that the history of opera was only
populated by stories of men doing awful things to women?

And it all comes to a head in Act III. The individual threads come
colliding together when Nabucco, the now disenfranchised father descends into
his deepest darkest cave. Having lost his throne and his position as the
patriarch of his people, he makes an incredibly moving reflective prayer-like
plea. Having hit rock bottom, he touches a kind of madness that I can only
liken to that of Shakespeare’s King Lear who suffers a similar fate at
the hands of two of his daughters. Then of course, all of this is followed by
Verdi’s big show-stopping patriotic choral interlude Va’ pensiero.
Beautifully executed, it is staged in a golden halo of transcendent light that
is as uplifting and gilded as the melody the terrific Met chorus gently sings.
It is truly gorgeous stuff and perhaps the most stunning ode to nationalistic
longing in the history of opera.

In just the past few months we have encountered several of the
most important and moving patriotic bits in the nineteenth-century Italiancanon.
Last October two of Rossini’s political hymns graced the stage in the same week
in both L’italiana in Algeri (Isabella’s aria Pensa alla patria)
and Guillaume Tell(the final chorus À nos accents religieux). In
Macbeth, which LoftOpera so brilliantly brought to us in December, we
got to hear Verdi’s breathtaking moment of collectively displaced reverie in Patria
oppressa.

It has been a season rife with Risorgimento undertones, as all the
great classics in the nationalist songbook were here. With the election cycle
rattling away through it all in the background like an obnoxious New York
radiator in the dead of winter, it has somehow felt fitting. If only today we
were so lucky as to be blessed with a populism that sounded so melodious.